Remind Me
by lotuskasumi
Summary: From a prompt on Tumblr: "Could you write something fluffy (and maybe slightly angsty) along the lines of 'three times Clara showed the Doctor that she loved him and one time that the Doctor showed Clara that he loved her? Thank you :)" Their love lives in the little things, the words unsaid and the words too tender to say. (Whouffle/Twelve x Clara)


01. _Love is patient._

As Clara had earned something of holiday – "I wouldn't exactly call an exploded boiler resulting in emergency evacuation of an entire school a _holiday," _"Well you're free, aren't you? Focus on what counts for a bit here," – she felt little hesitation in joining the Doctor when he arrived at her flat.

Well, she _said _"arrived." Landed in and nearly scared her half to death would be a more fitting explanation, considering she'd turned from the living room to shut off the shrieking kettle, then turned back and there he was, throwing open the door to the TARDIS and waving her on board, already in the middle of a sentence.

"It really isn't a holiday, Doctor," Clara said. "I still have work to do."

"What work? You aren't dressed for work."

Clara couldn't argue with that – but she'd certainly try. "A fair bit of being a teacher involves bringing your work home with you," she said, giving him a pointed glare that moved from his oblivious face to the pile of folders and papers she'd neatly stacked on her coffee table – that were now strewn in a mess about the floor, having scattered upon the TARDIS' arrival.

"I should be feeling guilty about that," he said, watching as she crouched to retrieve the scattered papers and notes. "I could even be saying sorry."

"So why aren't you?" she grumbled, resisting the urge to fling a paperclip at his head.

"Because I don't feel guilty," he said, but he did so from a different position than he'd been in when the conversation began. He was crouched in front of her, gathering up the rest of the papers, sorting them out quicker than she could at this early morning, pre-tea hour. "And I don't feel sorry," he added, patting the papers down, scowling at bent edges and long tears that nearly rent a page in two.

_Be patient, _Clara reminded herself, taking a few long, quiet breaths and keeping her eyes off his face. _Take a breath and above all, _be patient. She'd done this trick quite a lot at family functions and in front of rowdy classes. Still had to do it, in fact, when it came to one student in particular – and with the Doctor, always. Always, always breathe, be patient, and wait. Strange how she never wondered if he was worth all this exasperating trouble. It'd never really been a question she considered before, not even when he startled her like this and set her entire day teetering on the brink of a rather frustrating edge.

"Don't say what you don't feel," she said, accepting his part of the paper rescue effort with only a small bit of temper, snatching it from his hand with only the tiniest of snaps. "Is that your new motto?"

"Do I need one?"

"I don't know, Doctor," she said, and she really didn't. She was tired. There was tea waiting. And a bed, if she could talk him out of leaving and letting her back into it, all her work be damned.

"D'you know what you need?" he asked, and the question rather startled her. Not just the phrasing, but the way it was said. She hadn't heard him talk like that since... since... Well, since Mancini's. Since the cupboard at Coal Hill, with the three-weeks late coffee. Tender, quiet, hushed – but _why_?

Clara looked at the Doctor square in the eye, suddenly aware of a few seemingly inconsequential things. It was early, terribly early – the earliest he'd been in her flat, in fact. Almost as if he'd timed himself to arrive in the few minutes after she stumbled out of bed. He was close to her, too close – closer than he had been since they'd stared boldly, intently, and with more than a little fear into each other's eyes as another question hung between them: "_Am I a good man?"_

"I have a feeling you'll tell me," Clara said, looking between one eye and the next, aware that he was doing the same. A strange sort of mirroring examination. Clara couldn't understand why it was making her smile. "And I have a feeling you'll be wrong."

"Don't say what you don't feel," he repeated.

"Are you mimicking me?"

"No, I'm reminding you."

"I heard myself quite clearly."

"Did you?"

"Yes. And you still haven't told me."

"Haven't I?"

"No, you really haven't." Clara sat down on the backs of her legs and tilted her head, regarding him closer now that she was at a little distance. "_You _didn't have anything to do with the boilers exploding, did you?"

"Of course not," he said quickly, waspishly – and above all honestly, so Clara had to take him at his word. "And don't change the subject."

"Doctor, I don't even know what that _is_." _Be patient, _she reminded herself, repeating it over and over again inside her head until she was sure she'd accidentally let the words slip out.

"And that's my point exactly! You've been slaving all the best seconds of your life away at work, whittling yourself down to this fine little point of misery."

"I'm not miserable," she said, massaging her temples. "And it's a job, Doctor. A job I need and like..." She let the rest of the sentence hang unfinished.

"Sometimes," he said.

Clara lowered her hands. "Sorry?"

"Sometimes," he repeated, pushing himself back to his feet and offering a hand down to Clara to help her regain her own. "That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?"

She took his hand if only to give it a bone-clenching squeeze, since slaps were out of the question. "Doctor, where is this going?"

"On a trip," he said, still holding her hand – and then throwing it back as if he'd grabbed a shard of glass dipped in lye. He turned his back, but waved her on as he approached the TARDIS. "A trip away from the pudding brains. Yes, that's exactly what you need, Clara."

She watched him open the door and hold it back for her, not moving from the spot.

"Yes? What is it now?" he asked, examining her face with just a mite of impatience.

Clara thought of all the things she could have said, but didn't really want to say. _Don't say what you don't feel, _she reminded herself, alongside the chorus of _Be patient, be patient, be patient. _You didn't have to be in love to remember that love was rooted in such a sentiment. Right?

"Can't I finish my tea first?" she asked, a helpless little wisp of an argument. "Before we go anywhere and do anything else?"

The Doctor blustered past her, eyes rolling, head shaking, and was back in a flash, carrying not only the mug she so adored using but the kettle itself, steam still issuing from its pointed little spout. "Remind me again where you put the bags," he said, calling back to her over his shoulder.

Clara followed him on board, hiding her smile.

* * *

><p>02. <em>Love is kind.<em>

It was only later, after she'd finished two cups of tea and excused herself to get changed into something a tad more appropriate than her pyjamas – "Dancing cupcakes and sprinkles. Well. At least it shows _character_," "It shows I'm still no good at sewing. See all these holes?" "I was trying not to," – did Clara's curiosity catch up with her newly focused mind. They had settled into their respective places in the console room, unable to figure out where to land or what to do with the new stretch of free time given to her. Drifting seemed to be the only option left that they could agree on, and they took it – which Clara thought was rather kind of him. Almost suspiciously so. There was something on his mind – well, there was _always _something on his mind, but all signs pointed to something significant considering the evidence she was collecting. Arriving so early, rambling so quickly, fetching the tea and kettle so (almost) graciously. Yes, there was clearly something churning away inside his head, something he was rather trying to avoid.

And the best way to not think about something you couldn't help but think about was to talk. Talk on, talk endlessly, about next to nothing and little more besides. Clara knew what that felt like, had learned how to do it when she was still rather young, in the gap left behind from her mother's death. She'd had to do quite a lot of it for her father over the years until his torn heart slowly knit itself back together again. She'd had to do it for herself as well, in the quiet, lonely hours of the night when no one was listening, when no one else could keep her company besides her own self.

And she had to do it even now, sometimes. Even with the Doctor floating around in some nebulous, vague, always-potentially-there realm of expectation.

Clara took a deep breath, no longer needing to be patient, just kind, and turned her attention onto him. "How, exactly,_ would _you define a pudding brain?" she asked, calling out to him from where he stood on the opposite side of the room. "You've used the term before. Seem awfully fond of it in fact."

"Because it fits," he said. Snapped would be a more accurate description, but Clara felt little threat from even his most sour of tones. A bark with little bite to back it up - with her, at least. But she didn't want to think about that just now.

"And _how _does it fit? Remind me again."

"I don't think I've told you," he said. "I don't think I thought I had to." After a quick look and a soft tut, obligatory expressions of surface-level dismissal, the Doctor was ready to give the answer she sought. "Too large for the life inside, too small for the imagination it contains. Soft, cozy, __undisciplined___."_ He pulled a face at every word, as if they left a taste in his mouth that a finger in the air and then lowering it to jab in the distance separating herself from him, the Doctor added, "__That's __a pudding brain."

Clara knew better than to take personal grievance to any part of this statement, so rife with little offensive landmines though it was. That was the standard issue when he opened his mouth these days, and maybe in time she'd find a way to like it. Until then, half-acceptance and total amusement was really all she could hope for.

"Sometimes the TARDIS can feel like that, you know," she said. And she meant it, really, she did, and she didn't mean it half as rude as it came out. And he knew it. He had to.

"Try not to pick fights, Clara. You've been getting along so well. Wouldn't want to ruin it all now." And he paused, taking a step back to examine what he'd written on the board, twisting the chalk between his fingers. He seemed absolutely distracted by his work (whatever that work was), and thoroughly disinterested in her eyes pinned expertly to his back, watching him pace back and forth between his collection of chalkboards that ringed the second tier of the console room like sentinels. Clara was starting to recognize his wordless language as much as she was learning to see through the bluster and fury of his speech. He wasn't distracted at all, nor was he disinterested - he was _listening_. And listening close.

"Waiting for a tantrum?" Clara asked, tapping the front and back covers of the book in her hand with her nails, enjoying the little click and clack they made against the hard surface. She saw the way his shoulders had tensed first at the silence following her statement, then in the aftermath of her question. Worried, clearly worried – one might even say uneasy. For a moment that made her sad.

Yes, he _had _been waiting for a tantrum, clearly expecting some kind of wordless row revealed only in a series of blinking lights and incoherent growls released from the belly of ship. He might deny it all he liked, but Clara couldn't help but notice. It was as plain as the relief on his face when he turned from the board at last to look at her – though of course that "relief" might be called a surly scowl, or even a flat out thunderously dark expression by someone of a more purple prose-slanted mind. But Clara knew better than to take his face at its front and center value.

"Why would you say that?" he asked.

"Because it's true, isn't it?"

"Truth is subjective," he argued, turning back to the board and muttering something to himself under his breath.

"Sorry? Didn't catch that."

"I _said_," he repeated, forcing the words out, gripping at his hair and pulling it in that new, strange, endearing way of his, as if his thoughts were piling up too high inside his brain and he needed to tug at _something _to give them all more space to flourish. "Unless you're a cat."

"A cat."

"Or _like_ a cat. Cat-like. Cat-esque. Of a sort of vaguely reminiscent feline territory. Do you follow me?"

"Not remotely," Clara said, looking back down at her book. She wondered if he could see her bewildered expression from where he was on the opposite side of the room, at an angle from where she sat in his rather battered, but comfortable, armchair. It would save her the trouble of having to ask him to explain himself further, even if it came with another comment about her eyes.

"Remind me what I said to you about the TARDIS once. Ages past. Do you remember?"

"Did it involve not letting cats on board?"

"Oh that's right – you wouldn't know, would you?" he continued, talking back to himself about her. "What a year you've had. It's been a year, hasn't it? You've changed that little calendar you keep on the desk near your bed from cats to flowers."

Choosing not to ask him how he'd remember a little thing like that and overlook the more important matter of nearly everything else that was social graces and politeness, Clara lowered her book and watched him. He was pacing, scratching his forehead, and eying her askance. "Any comments about my brain and its potential pudding status will _not _be appreciated," she reminded him, folding her hands on the cover of the book.

"They weren't going to be made!" he said to her, waving his free hand, dismissing the words the way one passes their hand through smoke. Dismissing, scattering. Suddenly he clicked his fingers and stopped dead on the spot, spun, and was charging towards her, finger pointed again, the other clicking near his head. "Wait! No, don't wait. Question!"

Clara sat up straight, startled. "Yes?" she asked.

"Alec and Emma – remember them?"

"Yes, I remember them," she said, nodding, watching the way his face was shifting from one expression to the next, as if his thoughts were wired to the muscles of his face and directing their every little motion. "We played Ghostbusters for what wasn't a ghost at all or – something. She and I had a nice chat over tea about lo—" Clara stopped herself, pressing her lips down flat and tight. "About things," she finished weakly, wondering if he noticed.

If he did, he didn't comment on it. And again, Clara thought this was rather kind of him. Or perhaps he was simply oblivious. It was hard to tell with him sometimes.

"Remember what I told you out in the rain that night?" he said, then paused, considering. "One me, some other me – still me, you get the point."

Clara stared at him. "... What are you doing?" she asked.

"Preparing for any semantic-based arguing on your part," he said, then looked at her, rather surprised himself. "You... weren't going to do that, were you?"

Clara shook her head. "No. I wasn't."

He pressed his lips into a thin line. "Well that's embarrassing."

"I'll overlook it," Clara said, as she tried to remember just what he was getting at. "Did we talk about cats then?"

He almost sighed in exasperation. "No, not cats, the _TARDIS_. Keep up, Clara. I said the TARDIS is like a cat – slow to trust but you'll get there in the end."

"So it seems we did," she said.

"Yes, _exactly_," he added, but he was still looking so startled by this that she simply had to comment.

"And that doesn't make you happy?"

"_Happy? _That's _terrifying_," he said – and rather unexpectedly so, the Doctor laughed.

"Why is it terrifying?" she asked, keeping her tone flat and her face composed. He didn't scare her, not even when he was at his oddest. He _couldn't _scare her, not when it was so obvious he was really trying his damnedest and best to make a simple conversation work through whatever was howling away inside his head. She felt sad again, but worked to transform that sadness into something else, something kind, and far removed from pity.

"Because the last time this ship got along well with anyone, they became my – " and he stopped now, stopped on the word as if it were a trap that forced his mouth shut instead of splitting it open wide. But the look on his face was enough to let Clara know what the word might have been.

She lowered her eyes and spent a few minutes browsing aimlessly through her book again, giving him time to compose himself._ It isn't pity, _she reminded herself, staring at the same spot in the page as he muttered and paced the minutes away, his temper still needing to cool, like a kettle letting off shrieks and gusts of steam. _It's nothing like pity at all. It's kindness._

And you didn't have to be in love to be kind – but it certainly _helped._

* * *

><p>03. <em>It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres<em>.

Clara was patient. She was kind. And she was also human, with all the wonder and limits that simple, single word possessed.

And she could only handle so much.

Their aimless drifting didn't last long. His almost slip-up had soured his mood (more than it was usually sour, in fact) and darkened the atmosphere of their pleasant chatter, putting whatever was on his mind in the forefront of his thoughts. Clara watched him over the top of her book, not sure how to help, not sure where to start or even what to do – watching seemed the safest course of action to take, and so she chose it, but not gladly. She couldn't know what to help if she didn't know what _needed _her help. And he was usually so forthcoming with that information these days.

Well. Sort of. Sometimes.

When the Doctor pulled himself out of the mire of his thoughts and began to set their course, throwing knobs and levers and jamming buttons with more force than usual, Clara remembered feeling just the smallest twinge of relief. She relaxed in the chair and began to tuck in to the book with renewed gusto, smiling at him as he began to pace back and forth around the console, until he arrived at the last lever.

"Got something planned?" she asked, knowing that he did, but wanting to hear him say what it was.

"I thought I did," he said, glancing up at her. He waited, his hand on the switch – and then he threw it.

Clara set the book down on the arm of the chair and bounded over to his side. "Right. Where are we going? Or... when? Where and-or when?" she asked, glancing up at his face to see if an answer was written there. But his face had become a slate she couldn't quite understand, and she could feel her smile sliding off until her expression met his – blank, concealed, with a pair of eyes both watchful and dark.

"Home," he said. And then he clarified, "Your home. Only about an hour after you left."

"You're sending me back," she said.

"I can't _send _you anywhere," he muttered. "Learned that a while back."

"Nor should you. Nor should you _want_ to."

"Keen to hang around, are you?"

"Except for right now, yes," Clara said, staring at him, not really seeing him because she didn't know _what _she was seeing now. Her patience and kindness evaporated in an instant, like so many petals scattered on a sudden loud, howling gust of wind that preceded the most ferocious of storms.

They continued to gaze at each other, a miniature, paler set of one another alive inside the other's eyes, without saying a single word. The TARDIS landed and the Doctor stepped around behind Clara, walking to the doors, opening them wide. Clara followed – and then snatched at his arm, turning him round to face her. She could feel him flinch under her grasp, and that hurt as bad as a knife slipped under her ribs. But she held on tightly, keeping her eyes on his face and her gestures slow, measured, and easy to trace as she reached out with her other hand to hold his other arm and keep him in place.

He squirmed, as she expected him to – but what she didn't expect was to have him look at her with such raw, open unease, like a wound that couldn't quite keep itself hidden out of sight. Love, like all aches in the end, is the sort of pain that demands to be seen and shown and felt. But you didn't have to be in love to feel that, surely. … Right?

"Doctor – _what's wrong_?" she asked, hoping against her better judgment for an actual answer. But that's what love did. It hoped, it tried, it kept on trying, because there was nothing so terrifying as a love that gives up.

"Does something have to be wrong for you to care about it?"

Clara let go of him – and let go of her patience, her kindness. Let go of her interest in finding out what shadow and thoughts lurked behind those eyes. Let go of whatever tiny, fraying thread of happiness she'd been hoping to salvage out of this rather bizarre start to her morning. But just for a second.

She stepped around him, flat-footed, hard, meaning every angry stomp she tread, and barely looked back until she was clear of him, of the TARDIS, back with her own two feet planted in her living room. And somehow, impossibly, he had followed her.

"Is this what you thought I needed? An argument?" she asked, the words lost in a mangled, sarcastic laugh. How quickly he could pull the temper out of her, and do so without much effort at all. She'd never met someone so infuriating in her life – Linda could eat her heart out – but the only reason he infuriated her so much was because she... cared.

"I don't know. Do you?"

Clara rubbed her eyes, her forehead, and then ran her fingers up to pull at her scalp – and stopped. She knew where she'd seen that last. "Just... leave me alone for bit," she said, sighing as she did so. The words were so soft she wondered if he'd heard them.

But of course he did. He was always listening, wasn't he? Silently he turned, without a word, and strode back into the TARDIS.

Fear went wild inside her heart and made her talk before Clara's mind could make sense of the words that gushed out. "No – wait. Don't go, please."

It was the "no" that stopped him, but the "please" that made him turn. "You said to leave you alone."

"I meant leave me alone, but don't... leave me _alone_." It didn't make sense and she knew it didn't – but he had to understand, didn't he? _Leave me alone, don't pester me, don't confuse and worry and startle me so bad that every thought of your haunted, searching eyes keeps me up at night – but don't leave me alone without you, don't leave me behind, don't ever stop being you_.

It barely made sense inside of Clara's head, and she couldn't imagine the Doctor would be able to understand it, either. But somehow, again impossibly, surprisingly, he did – or seemed to, at least. And that was better than nothing.

He shut the door, but was on the right side of it, facing her again. Waiting.

Clara, not sure what to do next, took a seat on the couch and put her hands into a little nest of tangled, twitching fingers. She watched him pace around her living room, rubbing his hand over his forehead much like she'd just done – and this could have made her smile if she weren't sure he was also looking at her, keeping a keen, rigid eye on her out of the corner of his gaze. She couldn't smile yet. Not with his attention on her like that.

And so they waited together, watching the other in silence. Clara sitting rigid and expectant in a rapidly becoming uncomfortable seat, the Doctor pacing, wandering, walking the same lonely stretch of floor between the TARDIS to her kitchen and back again. She watched him more than once try to say something then realize either the powerlessness of his words or some other kind of wretched failure, because he scoffed and laughed, half to himself, shaking his head, turning about-face and ready to try again.

She watched him search for the words and felt suddenly lifted out of herself, as if she were dangling in a corner on the ceiling watching this all take place. He was reminding her of herself on the nights when sleep escaped her reach, when she couldn't find the words she needed the most, words to bring comfort even in the form of nervous, mindless chatter. He was reminding her of all the ways she'd been in the days after her mother's death, groping in the dark for something to say, anything, anything at all, anything that could find a way to transfer what raged and roared away inside her head into an intelligible sentence – one that didn't involve tears or screams. He reminded her of the students she sometimes caught at the end of the day, ducking into or out of bathrooms with their faces blotchy, broken, and red, their eyes strained against tears they knew better than to show, their mouths twisted and clamped tight around cries they dreaded to give life. Pain could do that. Hope, too. And love – love, above all things, was the bitterest torment.

But what on earth, and above and beyond it for that matter, could be hurting the Doctor so badly? Hurting badly enough that it escaped his ability to say? Clara watched him for a few minutes more, until she realized with a quiet certainty that this was the best he could do. He was trying to answer the questions that were writ across her curious, staggered expression, trying and trying and trying – and wasn't that enough? For now, it would have to be.

"Doctor," she said. And he stopped on the sound of her voice. It terrified her, that she could have such a command over someone who was still ever at odds with his own self. She smiled at him, not expecting one in return, and not minding that she didn't get it. She'd smile enough for the pair of them.

After she was sure she had his full attention, Clara pushed up her sleeves and held out her arms.

The Doctor stared at them. "What is it?" he asked, not quite grasping the point – or at least wanting to seem like he didn't.

"Come here," she said, crooking her fingers up as she said it.

There were many other words fit neatly into those two. Clara wondered if the Doctor could hear them. _You're tired, so tired – and it's because you're trying too hard. I push you only as much as you push me back, but I'm not trying to knock you over. Don't you know that? You do, don't you. I don't think I have to ask. You're tired, so tired – and you really ought to be kinder to yourself, you know. Have more patience and trust and hope to balance out all that relentless perseverance. You can only do so much. Time Lord or not, you've still only got that one brain inside your head. Try to be nicer to it. And to those hearts as well. Brains can be puddings the way hearts can become pulp – tread lightly on them both._

The Doctor laughed as if he'd heard that last part, and finally he approached – but he did so carefully, keeping a part of himself drawn back and at a distance where Clara couldn't quite grasp. She could reach out and hold his hands well enough, and she thought about doing so until she remembered how he'd flailed and flinched and responded to her touch the last time she tried. He'd approached as close as he dared, and that would simply have to suffice.

Clara drew her hands back and gave the cushion on the couch next to her a welcoming pat. "Sit down. Relax."

"I don't need to relax," the Doctor said.

Clara side-eyed him. "He said hastily, and without much conviction."

"I don't need you to supply a narrative to the conversation, Clara."

"Then sit down," she said, smiling wider. "I'll stop if you sit down."

He sat down at once – about a cushion away from where Clara had indicated, all but pressing himself against the other side of the couch from where she sat. Clara waited a minute before she turned to him, intent to ask what was wrong again, but the Doctor beat her to it.

"D'you know what's wrong with you?" he asked, scowling. His face was full of thunder, but his voice was as tender as it had been when he'd reached out for her hand in Mancini's, giving it the smallest, softest, most heart-aching of strokes.

"I have a feeling you'll tell me," Clara said, eyebrows raised. "And I've a feeling you'll once again be wrong."

He started to say something – and then stopped himself. But it wasn't long before he began to speak again. "Ever hear of Mary Poppins?"

Clara snorted. "'Course I have. _'Practically perfect in every way,'_" she said, putting on her best impression, which wasn't all that good, all things considered. But it was the effort that mattered in the end. "I kind of always admired her. Why?"

The Doctor pointed at her. "That," he said, "is exactly what's wrong with you."

Clara began to reply, and then stopped herself, catching the words and pulling them back. She tilted her head, frowned, and then tried to answer again. This came out instead: "Are you _complimenting_ me?"

"Don't worry. I won't make a habit of it."

"It's not exactly a _bad_ habit to have," she pointed out. "There could be worse ones to develop."

"Still wouldn't want to let it get to your head," he said, and his hand was reaching out as if to give her hair a pat, not quite catching himself at what he was doing until his hand was nearly there. And when he realized – his eyes popping for just a second before they narrowed fast – there was little else the Doctor could do after that then try to pretend he'd been reaching for something else. And that's how he ended up giving Clara a stiff, awkward, mostly knuckled tap on the shoulder in lieu of a friendly, far more natural (and what he originally intended) pat.

Clara leaned in to the touch, however botched a touch it was, and smiled kindly at him. "What the hell was that?" she asked.

"A mistake," he grumbled. But Clara wasn't fooled.

"You're welcome to make it again," she said.

A minuted passed. Clara knew it was a minute because she was keeping track of it inside her head, counting the seconds up to when his hand moved from its awkward knotted fist on her shoulder to its original stance. But then he moved it, reaching down for one of her hands, running his fingers as delicately as he dared over the back of her knuckles. Clara sat very still, an imitation of glass, and let her smile freeze in place.

"Remind me what I said to you when we first met," the Doctor said. "After the game-playing bit."

"You don't remember?" she asked, not really believing it herself. But it had to be asked all the same.

"I remember. All the same. Humor me. Remind me."

With her heart dancing madly against the too small, swollen shut cage her ribs had become, Clara said, "_'I don't want you to change.'_"

"Quite right," he said, and the look he gave her just then – oh, such a look it was. She hadn't seen that look since she'd asked the question that seemed to break his hearts. _"Am I home?"_

Strange the way his answer was starting to dawn on her here and now, weeks and months after it was first heard and said. Strange the way those words were starting to align themselves into pieces that built to a new understanding: _"If you want to be." Your home could be here, if you want it to be._

Clara wondered what he might say should the question and answer be reversed. She glanced down at his hand, still on top of her own, and thought she had her answer.

* * *

><p>04. <em>Love never fails.<em>

Clara returned home from work a week later to find the Doctor in her flat, having an argument with the television about a special on Cicero. That wasn't terribly surprising, and she didn't bat an eye at the sight either – she did, however, stop dead and stare at the profusion of flowers waiting for her in a vase on the coffee table.

"Roses?" she asked, confused.

The Doctor peered over his shoulder at her, then followed her wide eyes to the vase in front of him. "Yes. Roses. Well spotted," he said before he went back to glaring at the television.

Clara shoved the door closed behind her, dropped her bag to the floor, and approached the vase with as much caution as one gives to a live bomb. "Why are there roses in my house?" she asked.

His responding question came after a thoughtful pause. "Do you not like roses?"

"I don't _dislike_ roses," Clara said, figuring she'd best cut to the quick. "Where'd you get them?"

"There's a shop down the road. Gainsborough's Garden, ever hear of it?"

"I have," Clara said, folding her arms and giving the vase a glare she soon turned to the Doctor. "_How'd _you get them?"

"With money."

"What money?"

"The local currency," the Doctor said.

"And how did you come by this currency?"

"Can't just enjoy them, can you?" he asked, scowling.

"I'll enjoy them once I know they're not stolen."

"I'm not a thief, Clara," he snapped. And then his face brightened, a thought alighting. "Though I don't recall you complaining _too _much about thieves when we made a trip over to Sherwood."

"That's besides the point," she muttered, and trudged back to her room to change. There was something else about the roses that were nagging her, something she couldn't quite place, a point she was missing with every attempt to strike it. It wasn't until she shut the door to her room and took a glance at the little calendar on her desk did everything fall into place.

Lavender roses were displayed in profusion for this month, their pale purple blooms curling open gently, carefully. Their petals were scattered around a crystal vase little different from the one waiting for her on the coffee table in the other room – indeed, she'd come home to as close to a real life replica of the photo as she was likely to get. Beneath the photo was both a definition of what the flowers meant in their own strange, silly language, and an answer that the Doctor hadn't been able to directly provide no matter how he was prodded. At least, he hadn't given it in so many words.

_Lavender roses – "love at first sight."_

Clara opened the door and bounded back to his side, determined to give him a hug. It was the first time he seemed to steel himself for this reaction, and so he barely flinched or flailed. After a moment he even relaxed a little, giving the back of her arms a tender little pat.

"Thank you," she said.

"Yes. Well. You know," he said, not really saying anything.

But Clara understood him just fine – and what's more, he knew that she did. And he didn't even try to hide his smile.


End file.
